Prison contracts regularly come up for reconsideration

Over 200 privately-owned or privately-managed correctional facilities - jails, prisons, and immigrant detention centers - currently operate in the United States. They’re the sites of an ongoing argument between capitalist-backed “practicality” and public principles opposed to “prison for profit,” and they’re tethered to their government employers through a series of contracts of varying terms and frequent reconsideration.

According to GEO Group’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the year 2018, 51 of their facilities are scheduled to hit the end of their current contracts

Montana’s Crossroads Correctional Facility, which is operated under a CoreCivic contract slated to expire next year, may switch managers if the state can’t reach an agreement with the prison company; an attempt to extend the contract involved offering the state a direct cash payment while plotting an increase in prisoner per diem, or cost to stay per day, and it was ultimately turned down.

Among the potential turnover in GEO Group’s contracts are multiple local-level facilities, including some purposely offloaded by the operator. It recently cancelled a contract for Fannin County Jail in Texas, which local officials assume will be picked up by another private outfit, and it runs the Garden Grove City Jail, the current term for which concludes soon.

MuckRock will be keeping an eye on correctional contracts scheduled to come under consideration in the coming months. You can help us out by letting us know of any near you and keeping us apprised of for-profit prison conversations in the area you live.

Red = CoreCivic

Blue = GEO Group

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